This nor This is not That and not I

Amazing syntactic twist unfolds round a series of negations marking transitoriness and ending with endurance of the self…

This is not the moon,
Nor is this the spring,
Of other springs,
And I alone
Am still the same

Translated by Kenneth Rexroth from Ariwawa No Narihira, collected in One Hundred Poems from the Japanese.

And so for day 2122
04.10.2012